This week marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh on August 15, 1771. Scott was one of the most popular English language authors of 19th century, whose work was frequently reprinted in both Great Britain and the USA. His Romantic poetry and historical novels …
Among the recent acquisitions made for the Robert Burns Collection and Rowe Collection of William Wordsworth are two first editions of famous works of English Romanticism. Pictured is the first volume of The Scots Musical Museum, a collection of Scottish folk songs published 1787-1803. Burns collaborated with Edinburgh music publisher James Johnson to gather songs …
English poet John Keats published his famous long poem Endymion in the spring of 1818. The first literary reviewers hated it, but over the centuries, the poem and poet’s legacy has grown and it’s now a staple of English poetry anthologies. Even if you’ve never read Endymion, you probably know its first line: “A thing …
This month’s Special Collections lobby exhibit, “The Willing Suspension of Disbelief,” is devoted to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” from its first appearance in the 1798 Lyrical Ballads (shown here) to modern illustrated editions. And, since it’s National Poetry Month, you’re invited to a dramatic reading of the poem by the …
L. Tom Perry Special Collections has acquired extensive collections of Romantic-era authors Robert Burns and William Wordsworth, but there are many other examples of Romantic literature to be found in our vaults. Special Collections Fall 2016 intern Rachel Rackham has put together a guide listing our earliest editions of major Romantic poets like Byron, Coleridge, …
In May of 1816, two of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most famous poems were published in London. Christabel and Kubla Khan – both unfinished fragments – were originally written around 1797. Coleridge had abandoned both poems, but fellow poet Lord Byron convinced him to publish them. The two poems appeared with a third, The Pains of …
This summer marks the 200th anniversary of the appearance in print of William Wordsworth’s The White Doe of Rylstone; or, The Fate of the Nortons. Wordsworth wrote this long narrative poem during the winter of 1807-1808, inspired by a visit to Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire which he and his sister made the previous summer. The …
Special Collections is proud to announce its acquisition of a first edition of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge for the Edward M. Rowe Collection of Wordsworth. Published in 1798 by J. & A. Arch at Gracechurch-street, London, Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote most of these poems as “experiments” in order to “ascertain how …